Most Racist City in America

Saw that, Ken.  It's a shame that happened, and just goes to show the pervasiveness of racism in America.  It can happen anywhere anyday.  The hatred comes from fear.  The antidote is kindness and respect.  

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mP3YhOzb74k

Allen Toussaint's version

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e4AWOmz53R4

Lee Dorsey's cover (backed by The Meters)

>>>  this place still can't seem to shake its awful historic reputation

Interesting read on that history (yes, I pasted too much here, but thought it was enlightening):

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/racist-history-portland/492035/

From its very beginning, Oregon was an inhospitable place for black people. In 1844, the provisional government of the territory passed a law banning slavery, and at the same time required any African American in Oregon leave the territory. Any black person remaining would be flogged publicly every six months until he left. Five years later, another law was passed that forbade free African Americans from entering into Oregon, according to the Communities of Color report.

In 1857, Oregon adopted a state constitution that banned black people from coming to the state, residing in the state, or holding property in the state. During this time, any white male settler could receive 650 acres of land and another 650 if he was married. This, of course, was land taken from native people who had been living here for centuries.

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With the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, Oregon’s laws preventing black people from living in the state and owning property were superseded by national law. But Oregon itself didn’t ratify the 14th Amendment—the Equal Protection Clause—until 1973. (Or, more exactly, the state ratified the amendment in 1866, rescinded its ratification in 1868, and then finally ratified it for good in 1973.) It didn’t ratify the 15th Amendment, which gave black people the right to vote, until 1959, making it one of only six states that refused to ratify that amendment when it passed.

This history resulted in a very white state. Technically, after 1868, black people could come to Oregon. But the black-exclusion laws had sent a very clear message nationwide, says Darrell Millner, a professor of black studies at Portland State University. “What those exclusion laws did was broadcast very broadly and loudly was that Oregon wasn’t a place where blacks would be welcome or comfortable,” he told me. By 1890, there were slightly more than 1,000 black people in the whole state of Oregon. By 1920, there were about 2,000.

The rise of the Ku Klux Klan made Oregon even more inhospitable for black people. The state had the highest per capita Klan membership in the country, according to Imarisha. Democrat Walter M. Pierce was elected to the governorship of the state in 1922 with the vocal support of the Klan, and photos in the local paper show the Portland chief of police, sheriff, district attorney, U.S. attorney, and mayor posing with Klansmen, accompanied by an article saying the men were taking advice from the Klan. Some of the laws passed during that time included literacy tests for anyone who wanted to vote in the state and compulsory public school for Oregonians, a measure targeted at Catholics.   

It wasn’t until World War II that a sizable black population moved to Oregon, lured by jobs in the shipyards, Millner said. The black population grew from 2,000 to 20,000 during the war, and the majority of the new residents lived in a place called Vanport, a city of houses nestled between Portland and Vancouver, Washington, constructed for the new residents. Yet after the war, blacks were encouraged to leave Oregon, Millner said, with the mayor of Portland commenting in a newspaper article that black people were not welcome. The Housing Authority of Portland mulled dismantling Vanport, and jobs for black people disappeared as white soldiers returned from war and displaced the men and women who had found jobs in the shipyards.

Dismantling Vanport proved unnecessary. In May of 1948, the Columbia River flooded, wiping out Vanport in a single day. Residents had been assured that the dikes protecting the housing were safe, and some lost everything in the flood.  At least 15 residents died, though some locals formulated a theory that the housing authority had quietly disposed of hundreds more bodies to cover up its slow response. The 18,500 residents of Vanport—6,300 of whom were black—had to find somewhere else to live.

For black residents, the only choice, if they wanted to stay in Portland, was a neighborhood called Albina that had emerged as a popular place to live for the black porters who worked in nearby Union Station. It was the only place black people were allowed to buy homes, after, in 1919, the Realty Board of Portland had approved a Code of Ethics forbidding realtors and bankers from selling or giving loans to minorities for properties located in white neighborhoods.

In 1956, voters approved the construction of an arena in the area, which destroyed 476 homes, half of them inhabited by black people, according to “Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment, 1940-2000,” a paper by the Portland State scholar Karen J. Gibson. This forced many people to move from what was considered “lower Albina” to “upper Albina.” But upper Albina was soon targeted for development, too, first when the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 provided funds for Portland to build Interstate 5 and Highway 99. Then a local hospital expansion was approved, clearing 76 acres, including 300 African American-owned homes and businesses and many shops at the junction of North Williams Avenue and Russell Street, the black “Main Street.”

The urban-renewal efforts made it difficult for black residents to maintain a close-knit community; the institutions that they frequented kept getting displaced. In Portland, according to Gibson, a generation of black people had grown up hearing about the “wicked white people who took away their neighborhoods.” In the meantime, displaced African Americans couldn’t acquire new property or land. Redlining, the process of denying loans to people who lived in certain areas, flourished in Portland in the 1970s and 1980s. An investigation by The Oregonian published in 1990 revealed that all the banks in Portland together had made just 10 mortgage loans in a four-census-tract area in the heart of Albina in the course of a year.

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Until the 1980s, “Portland was firmly in the hands of the status quo—the old, conservative, scratch-my-back, old-boys white network,” he said. The city had a series of police shootings of black men in the 1970s, and in the 1980s, the police department was investigated after officers ran over possums and then put the dead animals in front of black-owned restaurants.

Yet as the city became more progressive and “weird,” full of artists and techies and bikers, it did not have a conversation about its racist past. It still tends not to, even as gentrification and displacement continue in Albina and other neighborhoods.

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All I can say is, WOW.

Fucked Up...

I’m going to try and find an “upside” to all the overt racism we are seeing today: until it is front-and-center, it can’t be addressed and changed.

Well, it’s front-and-center, in your face. It can’t be denied or swept under a rug. Maybe we, as a society, need to see this shit so that we can make changes. The Civil Rights Movement was over 60 years ago, and it was only a start. It’s now time to make another leap ahead.

In general I've not been a big fan of the "smart phone" era that our society is now obsessed with, but one thing for sure is those things have exposed the daily evil that clearly has always been happening and is putting it right in our comfortable suburban faces.

I suppose the next thing we'll see is an effort to ban smart phones from minorities.

>>>>  right in our comfortable suburban faces.

ya...sigh....the more I look into this the more ugly it gets, and in both directions;  the 650 acres for free in Oregon 150 years ago sure screams massive government subsidies for the "self-made" white "settlers".   Portland's history is bad, but I suspect most cities have pretty bad histories. 

More about suburbs:   https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america

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  >>>>>>>Portland's history is bad, but I suspect most cities have pretty bad histories. 

We watched the PBS documentary on the Fillmore neighborhood last night. 

https://thebolditalic.com/the-dream-vs-reality-on-being-black-in-san-fra...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-womens-march-white_us_5c...

Overwhelmingly White’ California Women’s March Canceled Over Representation Concerns

Organizers said they would work harder to attract participants who reflect the community’s diversity.

I’m going to try and find an “upside” to all the overt racism we are seeing today: until it is front-and-center, it can’t be addressed and changed.

Well, it’s front-and-center, in your face. It can’t be denied or swept under a rug. Maybe we, as a society, need to see this shit so that we can make changes. The Civil Rights Movement was over 60 years ago, and it was only a start. It’s now time to make another leap ahead.<<<<

I agree.

It's almost as if the more "passive" form of racism is more destructive in that issues never get dealt with directly;  allowing our nation's larger "wound" to perpetually fester.  If only the north had seen Reconstruction efforts through on a national scale and had actually held the feet of the South to the fire re: civil rights.   As it stands, the "hidden remnants" are less identifiable, yet still powerful and easily gamed by those looking to exploit it to leverage for their own interests.

But in terms of a palpable feeling of racism outside of the South:  I've picked up more of an overt "bad vibe" in Boise vs. Portland ... 

& On the Lighter Side.....40 year anniversary of the release of Animal House....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fREmwwfT_Ts      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7lR3YDzKCA​

From Wikipedia>>

Black extras had to be bused in from Portland for the segment at the Dexter Lake Club (43.914°N 122.8115°W) due to their scarcity around Eugene. More seriously, the segment alarmed Tanen and other studio executives, who perceived it as racist and warned that "'black people in America are going to rip the seats out of theaters if you leave that scene in the movie.'" Richard Pryor's approval helped retain the segment in the film. 

There are sooooo many gingers in rural Oregon. Some randy redheaded pioneer must've been popular with the ladies. I honestly never saw any blatant racist shit in Oregon (like white people using the n word etc), but saw loads of redneck / hillbilly shit pretty much everywhere but Portland, which is a fine city.

OTOH Saw plenty of racist crap in yankee CT, NY, and Massachusetts. It was gross.

My son moved to Portland, so I've been visiting.   Was surprised to see only one African American at Karl Denson Tiny Universe show there. They are a funk band.

Noticed that KDTU is back in Portland for NYE tonight

I don't think young African Americans listen to or sample funk. 

But, but brah......

Knot & Ken ... could you repeat that?  

Had to turn the Michael Jackson down .....